In the field of food processing, machines manufactured for the purpose of slicing such comestible products as meat, luncheon meat, cheese, and the like generally comprise a blade and blade drive mechanism, a product infeed mechanism and control therefor, and a sliced product receiving mechanism. The use of modern packaging techniques, wherein the package is weight-marked and priced before being filled, demand that the control of slice thickness be very accurate, since the product density and diameter, as well as the number of slices per package, is not an easily controlled variable. Therefore, the product infeed mechanism, which controls the slice thickness, must be easily and quickly variable, as well as constant when fixed at a particular setting.
Ideally, the infeed mechanism should have a positive feed action, as opposed to gravity feed or spring-biased feed, which oscillates synchronously with the blade. That is, the product should be fed into the path of the blade when the blade is out of the way, and then held stationary while the blade passes through the product. Also, the infeed motion should be steplessly adjustable while the machine is in operation, to permit easy machine set-up and adjustment without frequent shutdowns. This feature would also permit the slicer to be programmed to make a group of slices, then idle while the receiving mechanism moves the group out of the way.
In the prior art the product infeed mechanisms of comestible product slicers suffer from certain disadvantages which depart substantially from the ideals set forth. They are, in general: 1 The uniformity of the output is poor because the infeed mechanisms rely on springs, which can overload at high cutting rates and fail to properly control the slice thickness; 2 The adjustment of the feed control latch is tricky, especially on a new machine. Thus, servicing is frequently required and demonstrations of new machines are unimpressive to new customers when the proper adjustments cannot be made quickly.